He went and crouched beside her. She put her head down, frightened, on the blanket.
"You are not a woman," he sneered. "You are a she-tarsk."
She sobbed.
"You are not worth sleen feed," he said.
"Do not interfere," cautioned the fellow in space 98, who had been ejected from the corner space. "He is dangerous."
"I do not expect to do so," I said. I did not object, of course, to his abuse of the Lady Temione. Indeed, the insults, in their way, while certainly overdrawn, were not altogether unjustified. The danger, of course, with one of my temper, was that I might suddenly feel a point of honor touched. Then, if I should fare up and say, pin the fellow to the floor with my blade, my plans would be seriously disrupted. I would be as placid as larl feigning sleep, as placid as a Dietrich of Tarnburg.
"What are you saying," asked the fellow, wheeling about.
"Nothing," I said.
He returned his attention to the Lady Temione.
"You are worthless," he told her.
"She does have auburn hair," I informed him. "I may be hard to see in this light."
"Then shave it off, and sell it," he laughed.
"The keeper might do that," I said.
Lady Temione moaned, helplessly.
This was, of course, a genuine possibility, particularly in this area at this time. women's hair, long and silky, plaited into heavy ropes, is ideal for the cording of catapults. It is far superior, for example, to vegetable fibers. It is also superior, in length and texture, to the hair of sleen and kaiila. By now, the hair of slaves in Ar's Station, and doubtless the hair of most of her free women as well, donated in the case of the latter as a contribution to the defense effort, would have been shaved off, or, perhaps, cropped short. If the keeper did decide to shave off, or crop, the hair of the Lady Temione, and, for that matter, the others, the Lady Amina, the Lady Rimice, and so on, he would presumably sell it to suppliers to the Cosians. Under the current conditions, of course, it would be difficult to get such material into Ar's Station. Indeed, in a sense, that was the same problem I faced, finding a way into Ar's Station.
"Worthless," snarled the burly, bearded fellow to the Lady Temione. The burly fellow stood up. I saw where he had placed the pouch.
He looked down upon the Lady Temione with contempt. "Get that thing out of my sight," he said. "I do not want my digestion spoiled for breakfast." I myself did not think I would have time for breakfast. I was planning on leaving rather early in the morning.
"Did you hear me?" he asked.
"The keeper's man will be along presently," I said.
"Do you cross me in this?" he asked.
"I would not think of doing so," I said. I located the hilt of my sword. I supposed that it might be less than noble to drive a blade through the body of a drunken fellow in the dark, but it was probably preferable, all things considered, to having one driven through myself.
"I will take her away," said the fellow next to me, hastily.
"It is not your responsibility," I said, somewhat ungraciously, I fear, considering the generosity of his offer.
"Look," said he. "I am now well practiced in smiting walls with my back, but I have had very little experience in dodging swords, leaping about unarmed, you understand, in the darkness, in the middle of a sword fight."
"Fight?" asked the burly fellow, interested.
"So I shall be pleased to return her to the keeper's desk," he said. I think the burly fellow reached for the hilt of his sword, but I missed it. My own blade left the sheath. I stood up.
The fellow between us moaned, and prepared to crawl rapidly to safety. "Oh!" said Lady Temione, lifted now, backwards, to the shoulder of the keeper's man who, unnoticed, had approached. "Slut rent period is up," he said. "Take her away," said the burly fellow, with a wave of his hand.
"That is my intention," said the keeper's man. He turned his back on us, and I saw, again, the face of the Lady Temione, facing backwards, held upon his shoulder in slave position.
"Put her in a tarsk cage," laughed the fellow. "That is where she belongs." Lady Temione briefly struggled in frustration on the shoulder of the keeper's man, squirming there doubtlessly more deliciously than she knew, and pulling helplessly at her bound wrists. She would be carried about and done with, of course, precisely as men wished. She looked back now in anger, but also in fear, at the burly fellow. Doubtless she thought she was attractive now. She did not understand, of course, how attractive, truly, she might be, subject to certain alterations in her condition. Our eyes met.
"Who wants a fight?" asked the burly fellow, unsteadily. He now had his hand on the hilt of his sword.
"No one," said the fellow between us, hastily, earnestly.
I did not think the burly fellow could well attack with the other fellow between us, not, at least, without cutting him out of the way. That would indeed be a poor way for that fellow to end his day, which had not been a very good one anyway. I sheathed my sword. I was not even sure that the burly fellow, in the darkness, realized I had drawn it. He himself had not proceeded further than to get his hand on his sword. I do not think he realized he was in any danger. "Are you the one who wants to fight?" he asked.
"Not me," I said.
"Then it is you!" cried the burly fellow, turning on the fellow between us. "No!" cried the fellow.
His response was surely prompt, I thought. It was assured and definite. It left little doubt about the matter.
"I am tired," announced the burly fellow.
"It is time then to go to sleep," said the other man. The burly fellow stood there for a moment considering this possibility. "Perhaps," he said.
I was sure, now, that it would not prove necessary to run the fellow through, at least at this time. in such a thrust, of course, he in his present condition, there would have been little of honor. Too, it is difficult to use a sword in a professional manner in the darkness, and I tend to be vain about such things. The sword is less akin to darkness than stealth and the dagger. A recruit, under the circumstance, could have felled him.
"It is time to go to sleep," announced the burly fellow.
"Yes, you are right," agreed the other man.
This was the second time the burly fellow, this night, had been in considerable danger. He would probably not realize this, even in the morning.
"Sit down," said the burly fellow to me.
"Very well," I said, sitting down. The other man sat down, too, in his space. The burly fellow then stood there and looked about him. He was the only one standing in the room.
He had taken the first tub in the baths. He had created a disturbance in the paga room. He had had an excellent slave sent to him, perhaps even gratis. I suspected he had had a greater variety of food to choose from than I had been offered. He had traversed the sleeping room like a hurricane. I doubted he would be too popular with the other guests. Indeed, more than one fellow he had struck about, making his way to his space. He had even come directly to his space, in a diagonal, rather than making use, like other folks, of more neighborly, if lengthier, orthogonals. Too, it seemed he had shown me insufficient respect, not to mention the fellow next to me, whose paid-for space he had appropriated, nor those he had trampled upon, and struck about, in his passage to our area. I also did not appreciate his criticizing me, mostly implicitly, for my choice of rent sluts. I frankly thought I might have seem more in the Lady Temione than he had. If nothing else, considering the prices in the inn, she came cheap. He then sat down in the corner space, 99, the safest, most private space on the floor. "Do you snore?" he asked the fellow next to me.
"Never," the fellow assured him. "If you do," said the burly fellow, "sit up tonight."
"I was planning on that anyway," the fellow assured him.